Design for Scalability: A Case Study of the River City Curriculum

One-size-fits-all educational innovations do not work because they ignore contextual factors that determine an intervention’s efficacy in a particular local situation. This paper presents a framework on how to design educational innovations for scalability through enhancing their adaptability for effective usage in a wide variety of settings. The River City multi-user virtual environment (MUVE), a technology-based curriculum designed to enhance engagement and learning in middle school science, is presented as a case study. To date over 250 teachers and 15,000 students throughout the United States and Canada have participated in the River City curriculum. Designers creating and evolving interventions can use this scaling framework to help them increase effectiveness, sustainability, and spread.     

The Effect of the Rate of Muscle Contraction on the Force-Time Curve Parameters of Male and Female Subjects

Purpose: Suprapostural task performance (manual tracking) and postural control (sway and frequency) were examined as a function of attentional focus, age, and tracking difficulty. Given the performance benefits often found under external focus conditions, it was hypothesized that external focus instructions would promote superior tracking and reduced postural sway for both age groups, most notably as a function of tracking difficulty. Method: Postural sway, frequency of postural adjustments, and tracking accuracy under two levels of task difficulty were assessed for younger (M _age = 20.98 years) and older (M _age = 70.80 years) participants while they manually tracked a pursuit-rotor target. Participants received instructions to focus on either their actions (internal focus) or the effect of their actions (external focus). Results: Analyses revealed a beneficial effect of an external focus on suprapostural performance on the less-difficult (0.5 Hz) tracking task, and this performance was associated with a modest improvement in medial-lateral postural sway. Conclusion: The findings offer limited support for external focus-of-attention benefits under a mildly challenging tracking task. While older adults tend to adopt a conservative postural control strategy regardless of tracking task difficulty, external focus instructions on a suprapostural task promoted a modest, beneficial shift in postural control.     

Adapting to changing task demands: variability in children's response to manipulations of resistance and cadence during pedaling

Reduction in performance variability is characteristic of skill acquisition during childhood. Less understood is the role of variability in adaptive skill. The purpose of this study was to determine children's capacity for adapting to changing task requirements. Children ages 4-14 years and adults rode a stationary ergometer at different levels of cadence and resistance. Younger children were less successful in meeting task requirements. When they did succeed, the younger children were more variable. However, no interactions were found. Variability did not change with resistance, and all groups showed increasing variability as cadence increased. It was concluded that in spite of a weaker synergy (more variability), children were adept to changes in task demand within tested limits.     

特权用户阻碍IT建设

谈到商业智能(BI),专栏作家Rick Sherman说,商业用户和IT企业之间就此问题存在着种种矛盾。但人们并不用对此过于担心,因为商业智能取得成功的关键在于那些特权用户。你是否想过,为什么很多公司从商业智能销售商那里购买了具有成百上千功能的软件,却仅使用其中的少许功能?为什么企业的员工在他们的IT解决方案中已经选定了一个商业智能工具,并打算不使用微软公司的Ex- cel时候,仍然还使用Excel作为他们的     

Volunteer youth sport coaches' perspectives of coaching education/certification and parental codes of conduct

The vast majority of youth sport programs in the United States relies primarily on parent volunteers to serve as coaches. Unfortunately, most of these volunteer coaches have not received formal training to prepare them adequately for the role of youth sport coach. To exacerbate the issue, according to the popular media, parents and other adults can commit belligerent and even violent acts around, and often resulting from, poorly managed youth sport events. Although some efforts have been made to standardize curricula, provide training for coaches, and contain or prevent inappropriate parent behaviors, few efforts have been directed at investigating the self-described needs and concerns of the coaches from their perspectives. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the concerns and issues of youth sport coaches related to coaching and parental education. Five focus group interviews with 25 volunteer youth sport coaches were conducted to investigate these issues. Results were organized around four higher order themes that emerged from inductive content analyses: (a) coaching education content areas of need, (b) barriers and problems of offering coaching education, (c) coaching education format recommendations, and (d) efficacy of parental codes of conduct. Results were discussed in terms of the potential impact administrators, coaches, and parents could have in implementing formal coaching education programs and developing their coaching education practices.     

The effects of cued interaction and ability grouping during cooperative computer-based science instruction

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of verbal interaction cues and ability grouping within a cooperative learning computer-based program. We blocked 231 eighth graders in a required science class by ability and randomly assigned them to homogeneous lower-ability, homogeneous higher-ability, or heterogeneous mixed-ability dyads. Each dyad was randomly assigned to a computer program that either did or did not contain verbal interaction cues designed to facilitate summarizing and explaining between partners. Results indicated that students using the cued version of the program performed significantly better on the posttest than students using the noncued version. Direct observation of student interaction indicated that students in cued dyads exhibited significantly more summarizing and helping behaviors than noncued students. Furthermore, higher-ability dyads exhibited significantly less off-task behavior than the other dyads. Implications for designing computer-based instruction for cooperative settings are provided.     

Pre-service Teachers’ Experiences with a Science Education Module

This paper describes a module provided to first year elementary participants in a two-year after-degree Bachelor of Education program. The module was specifically designed to address the fact that pre-service teachers can enter the B.Ed. degree with little or no science knowledge. Science experiences were explicitly incorporated into the B.Ed. module described here linking science content knowledge to specific science pedagogic content knowledge. The pre-service teachers were surveyed and interviewed during and after completion of the module. It was found that the inquiry based approach increased the pre-service teachers' level of science knowledge, their confidence with regard to teaching elementary science, and improved their attitude toward science teaching and learning.